RolePlay Wiki

quote:

I'll meet you at the Rock.

What is it?: The Rock is a rock. (Approximately 12-18 feet tall and a bit more across, uneven and climbable. In D&D terms, you'd need a STR of about 4,000 to move it. You'd think that's a "boulder", but apparently you can still call it a "rock".) There's room for one or two people to sit on top of it (knees tucked in or legs dangling off the side)- but not enough flat area to really lay down on.
Most kids just lean on it, stand nearby, squat down next to it, or do the same on a neighboring tree. There's a scorch mark on top where someone must've tried to light a camp-style fire, but it's not useful for that. It doesn't have moss or lichen on it, or weeds growing immediately around it, but that's easily attributed to decades of teens picking at them (to do something with their hands, as a fidget)

 It's covered with generations of etchings (done with persistence, not proper tools) and graffiti. Sun, rain, wind and time wore most marks down enough to allow new graffiti right over it without being confusing.

But there are readable old marks: "We're a couple!" etchings carved by couples, "We did it!" carvings from people who may not now remember what it was they did, "I was here" by etchings carved by people who were there, "RIP Buddy" etchings carved by people grieving for their friends, long-forgotten.
("Tagger" style spray graffiti hasn't caught on out here yet- this is almost all small-scale- mostly cuts or marker-work, rather than paint).

Where is it: "The Woods". (Undeveloped forest, not far from the High School school- definitely off school property, everyone knows that.) It's pretty much the main landmark in this stretch, besides "more trees". There's some brambles and undergrowth making it less of a straight walk than it would seem at first, but it's not especially hard to get to.

It's far enough into the woods that the only traffic noise is the whisper of a distant highway, and (if you're quiet) the wind through the trees.
(With all the dried leaves and underbrush, you can hear someone approaching pretty easily- more than enough warning to stop doing something you don't want to be caught doing.)
You could call the area it's in a 'clearing', but not a large one. (Maybe it's a "glade"- if people really said 'glade'.)

Who's here? This is, at the same time, the most and least private place possible for Hollowbrook's teenage population.

It's busiest during the school year, mostly between the end of school and nightfall.
Most kids will clear out by the time it really gets dark (There's no light out here, "you could trip and break your neck."), either heading home or grouping up to go do something else, leaving only the really stubborn. Staying overnight would be seen as weird ("you had nowhere else to go?")
But when it's used, it's USED.

Want to go smoke? Everyone (even kids who don't come out here) is aware that it's off school property- go there.
Want to meet up? Meet you at the Rock.
Fight? If it's not just in the school parking lot or behind the dumpsters, it's at the Rock.
Couples that want to hide being couples "just happen" to hang out here.
If you're so upset you can't go home or some public place, and just need somewhere to go be upset? The Rock. (Many a breakup, failed grade, year-held-back or non-admission to a college has been cried-about out here.)

Stoners are pretty sure the cops don't know about it. (Which is impossible, since at least some of the Hollowbrook PD grew up here, and must know. Yet, they rarely 'visit'.) Sometimes, when students play hooky, this is where they go, straight off campus- the only place they go until school would otherwise be over. (Which wastes hours of good hooky-time, but whatever.)

The Team likes to mark its championships out here, saying it's good luck (after all, look at all the championship teams that marked it before!)- but it's just as likely that Team members were out here doing the same smoking, talking, scheming, loving and hanging out that everyone else was doing.
(Members of a rival school's Team have, in the past, tried to vandalize the Rock, and that was a rare instance of an instant crosstown fight-starter.)

So, most Hollowbrook students know about it. But it's never been mentioned in the school paper, formally photographed or in the text of the Yearbook (what people write is another thing). Most adults from the area will, at most, have an "Oh, yeah!" I-remember-that reaction to vague memories of it.

As a place with both a lot of memories and little formal history, a place like this just gathers 'urban folklore' like a tree gets moss. But it's never been used for "Midnight Rituals" (let alone ones where a cat gets killed on Halloween or whatever story you've heard). The weirdest rumor is that, there have been so many RIP etchings (ranging from war-deaths to overdoses and car-accidents, all teenagers) that (sometimes) the name will be there first. Like a prediction. But that's probably just people telling tales to screw with eachother.

Where did it come from? A glacier dropped it here about 20,000 years ago.

What is the cutoff between "a boulder" and "a rock"? Don't start.